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HAWAII
Analyst upgrades Tesoro shares
Tesoro Petroleum Corp., which operates the largest of Hawaii's refineries and has 35 namesake retail gas stations in the state, was raised to "overweight/positive" from "underweight/negative" today by analyst Paul Cheng of Lehman Bros. Cheng also raised his target price to $10 from $4.The San Antonio-based company, which has been selling assets to pare its debt, has five "buy" ratings, five "holds" and two "sells." Its stock closed up 10.1 percent, or 62 cents, at $6.73.
MAINLAND
Bristol-Myers cleans up books
NEW YORK >> Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. overstated sales by $2.5 billion for 1999 to 2001 by encouraging wholesalers to purchase more drugs than they could sell, forcing the company today to cut $900 million from its previously reported earnings.The company, whose chief executive, Peter Dolan, has been criticized for his management and a plunging stock price, said the long-awaited restatement of earnings was due to "errors and inappropriate accounting."
"This seems to clean up their accounting and give us some idea of the true earnings power of Bristol-Myers even though the company's presentation was very confusing and disorganized," said Larry Smith, a drug analyst for Gerard Klauer Mattison & Co, who rates Bristol a "buy."
Drugmakers often coax wholesalers to buy more of their products than they immediately can sell. But analysts have said the magnitude of Bristol-Myers' sales incentives in recent years may have been unprecedented.
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission launched a probe last July into the company's accounting. The SEC has provided no further details about the investigation.
American eyes bankruptcy funding
CHICAGO >> AMR Corp.'s American Airlines has quietly begun talks on Wall Street seeking up to $2 billion in bankruptcy financing should a Chapter 11 filing become necessary, a source familiar with the matter said today."They're starting out with a very high, unreasonable request to raise $2 billion," said the source, who declined to be identified. The Fort Worth, Texas-based carrier is the world's largest airline, followed by UAL Corp.'s United Airlines, which filed for bankruptcy in December.
A spokesman for American declined to comment on the talks, which are taking place with a number of financial institutions. The airline is pursuing cost-cutting agreements with its labor unions as a way to avoid a bankruptcy filing.
Ready or not, the tax man cometh
April 15 is the day we typically pay Uncle Sam his fiscal due. But plenty of us don't have ready cash on Tax Day.For those who owe this year, 73 percent said in an online survey they'll turn to savings. For those who can't pay, 8 percent said they'll charge their taxes to a credit card and pay over time. Six percent said they'd sell stocks or other investments to raise the cash, and another 5 percent said they'd get another form of loan. The results are from a poll posted last month by Yahoo! Finance. There were nearly 98,000 votes.
OPEC split on plan to suspend oil limits
VIENNA >> OPEC today was split over plans to suspend output limits should the United States launch war on Iraq, fuelling fears of a further spike in the price of oil.Iran said it opposed a bid by Western-friendly OPEC states for a policy that Tehran says implies support for a U.S. attack, by controlling fuel costs.
Gulf OPEC powers Saudi Arabia and Kuwait had hoped to find backing at meeting tomorrow of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries to set aside production quotas if war prevents Iraqi deliveries.
Riyadh is trying to convince the U.S. and other importers that OPEC can compensate for war stoppages without the need for a coordinated release from emergency consumer country stockpiles.
While most in OPEC appear content to permit those with spare capacity to open the taps during a war, there is widespread reluctance to explicitly endorse a formal suspension of quotas.
Supply problems raise average price of gas
CAMARILLO, Calif. >> Gasoline supply problems in California contributed to a 5 cent-per- gallon increase in the national average over the past two weeks, an industry analyst said.The average weighted price for gas, including all grades and taxes, was about $1.75 per gallon Friday, according to the Lundberg Survey of 8,000 stations nationwide. That is within 2 cents of $1.77, the all-time high recorded by the survey on May 18, 2001.
But not all consumers were paying that much; some parts of the country enjoyed stability while California's pump prices jumped almost 14 cents from Feb. 21 to Friday.
The increase in the U.S. average "is nearly entirely due to California refineries switching over to corn-based additives," Trilby Lundberg said.
The nation's highest price for self-serve regular gasoline was $2.10 in San Francisco. The lowest was about $1.51 in Atlanta.
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